What's happening to the young men?

[MrsSchrute]

This post is prompted by an article in the Guardian about the murderer of Amie Grey, who has been sentenced to 39 years.
His psychiatric report said he had: 'repressed socially induced trauma resulting from a combination of real and perceived rejections and social humiliations resulting in him feeling alien from general society, a social misfit, somebody who had hardly any friends at school, had never had a girlfriend and seemed to be avoided”

He came from a loving family and had never been in trouble before.

Now, obviously he should absolutely be in prison for what he did, and there is no excuse.

Why is it that more and more young men seem to be so seperate from society? Has it always been the case? Is it the easy access that the internet allows to extremist material that's the issue? What can we, or society, do to stop this??

Andrew Tate sells courses to men so that they can join this 20% group. Incels hate the 20% group (Chads) and think that they are to blame for that lack of sex but would offer their right arm to be one of them.

Oh yes, they can obviously be great fathers, lovers, great careers, great friends, nurturing, strong. We need to focus on people being individuals and not lump them into a category because of their genitals. But most of all talk about how your actions affect you and others. Respect. You can’t take jobs, sex, friendship as a right. That’s definitely not what it means to be a man, or a human.

Wow, those men really need to learn how percentages work.

Perhaps the government could insist they do a certain number of hours of weekly volunteer work

Firstly, it's not "volunteering" if they are compelled to turn up. By definition, a volunteer is there by choice.
Secondly, a previous Govt suggested this and the loud and unanimous response from the charitable sector was "oh hell no". There is nothing, nothing more disruptive to a workplace (and I include charity premises as workplaces) than having people forced on you who don't want to be there.

The only person benefitting from that is Andrew Tate. He's a grifter and a snake oil salesman.

Rising use of Drugs? More cases of Autism? Feeling unlike others not fitting in and then the likes of andrew tate aside from that no idea but it's concerning

Women don’t need men like they used to that’s the bottom line.
Social media portrays amazing lives that few have.

Men and women coupled up out of necessity in times past for economic reasons, I mean you are still usually better off but you just had to then plus who would risk pregnancy in those days? You didn’t if you were respectable.

This whole 20% thing though, how many men in your life have you met who you would consider dating ? I haven’t even met 20%.

On dating apps men will swipe on far more women than women swipe on men, that is not untrue. So whilst Tate is an abomination women do get more swipes. Women risk a lot more though. My DS stated online dating and I was quite worried. I did say to DH that I was really glad he wasn’t a young woman as would worry even more. He is tall and had loads of matches and is now seeing a really attractive and accomplished young woman, yet to meet her as only a month in. DS very nice mate, lovely lad who is 5ft6 gets very few matches. Read it on here how many women prefer taller men just like many men prefer slim women, not all I hasten to add before anyone accuses me of saying it’s everyone but it’s probably the majority.

It doesn’t really. It doesn’t explain why men have become like this, just that they have. Why do men follow people like Andrew Tate these days, what has happened to make men today so different from those of even just 30 years ago?

The change in many men hasn’t just happened in isolation. Is it down to the use of pornography, a reaction to feminism, oestrogen from contraceptives in our drinking water affecting them in some way etc etc. I expect the answers are many and complex, but just saying it’s up to men to change isn’t going to get us very far in my opinion .

If you ever see a video by an incel, they talk about how great they are and how they would treat a women brilliantly but this 20% group date multiple women simultaneously leaving only the bottom 20% for 80% of men. They think that 80% of women are attracted to the Chads even though they know that they are cheaters etc because women find that attractive

I expect the answers are many and complex, but just saying it’s up to men to change isn’t going to get us very far in my opinion .

Agree

Women used to need men financially and men need women emotionally. Now women are more independent but men still need women to feel whole.

Video games create an illusion of life being easier than it really is. Every single game out there is weighted in favour of the player(s) because unwinnable games don't sell and many have time-saving shortcuts, like travel between two map areas taking four days of in-game time but is near-instant, taking only the time needed for the next map area to load, in real time.

Single-player games are worse than multi-player games because you can save and reload when you lose, creating an illusion that you can always win by retrying. In real life, failure happens and there is no reload button, you have to live with that failure and its consequences. Single-player video games don't train kids in the resilience needed to cope with real-life failure, and when played excessively, undermine that resilience because an unused skill will fade.

It doesn't say that he was an incel (which is characterised as terrorism) or that he had any mental health disorders.

He had a fascination with psychopaths, murder and knives. This was premeditated and he scouted the area looking for victims.

He comes across as a angry and entitled. He's a perfect example of toxic masculinity, taking his rage out on women. He didn't care about the victims and wanted to be famous for his crimes.

Dangerous men are all around us, domestic abuse is a national crisis. Misogyny is rife and increasing due to characters such as Andrew Tate, Trump and all the other misfits posturing as alphas.

An angry man killed a woman, two die a week at the hands of angry men. Unfortunately this is nothing new.

I invite incels to lurk on the Relationships board of this very website to see how actual women react to cheats.

A glossary of terms you will encounter:
LTB means Leave The Bastard.
get your ducks in a row means get legal advice and copies of all financial documents in preparation for initiating divorce.
OW is the cheating husband's affair partner, the "other woman".
STBXH refers to the cheating "soon-to-be-ex husband".
STI means sexually-transmitted infection, in the context of getting a test for anything the STBXH has brought home.

Thinking about it, the glossary alone is actually pretty indicative of how actual women react to cheats.

It's about managing expectations
Navigating the present social world as a teenager
Educating your growing teen that the internet is a fiction world

We have x2 teen boys (16 and 14) they are ok.

You have to listen to them, really listen.

No it's not
How you parent them through teenage with social media is so much more important than the nonsense posted online

I think this is a large part of it.

"Comparison is the thief of happiness. "

And people posting on social media only post the achievements, successes or the good times such as holidays. No one posts about their failures, sadness or dull everyday life such as a shit day at work or doing the laundry. As a result by reading other people's posts we feel like our own lives are a failure or crap in comparison.

This gets even worse when compared to glamorous multi millionaire "celebrity posters".

The feeling of failure then leads to isolation and anger. It doesn't take much for those affected to be attracted to online extremists that tell you that all your woes are the fault of feminism or western society or immigration or capitalism etc etc. They then enter into an echo chamber that reinforces their beliefs which in the case of some individuals leads to violence or criminal actions.

In the old days, we sent them to wars/colonies. Young male aggression has always been (and will always be) a societal issue that needs to be collectively tackled. I don't know what would be the way we do this nowadays.

Maybe we, as a society, should stop putting people in pigeon holes, and try and figure out what is going so wrong with society that people are not engaging with it.

My DS is a teen, he has autism, and EHCP, goes to a mainstream school. He doesn't have, and has never had, a friend. He doesn't have the social skills to navigate friendships. His communication skills are incredibly limited.
How do I prevent him going down this path??

there have always been men and women who had trouble fitting into the role of what society deems as a successful adult. It used to be that if a man was even marginally compliant with societal norms, he could expect to find a wife. Women had no choice but to tie themselves to men in order to navigate society. These men would then have access to sex and a person who likely compensated for their deficiencies in order to keep the household functional.

Women no longer need a man to be a socially sanctioned adult. A woman can choose if she wants a partner and there is no reason to pair with someone that doesn’t bring something positive to the relationship. Men are left adrift, without someone to essentially rescue them?

So why don’t we see non-conforming women forming a dysfunctional sub-culture. The truth is that there are men who are still perfectly happy to take on a woman as a partner who brings little more than sex to a relationship. Those women who might otherwise be marginalized still have a place in our society, largely because men have lower standards.

Looking at it from my ds' point of view, school expects him to achieve great grades but he has female class mates who mature faster and work much harder than him. He sees them getting better grades than him.

They are much glossier and more confident than him. No chance of a date, they're dating men three or four years older. So he retreats into computer games and Youtube humour.

Thankfully my ds is ok, he has friends and sports, a sensai, a good supportive school. Yes his dad is absent but he has me who will fight his corner with my last breath.

I can see how a socially awkward boy without any support might get angry. But there's a difference between being angry and vandalising a bus shelter, and killing a complete stranger.

That's the bit I don't understand.

My cure

a bit of tough love from parents and a society that stops tell us ND people that we are wrong simply for existing.

if you don’t think your child is going to fit into some cookie cutter idea of a life plan, help them figure out a real plan and help them on that path. Set an expectation of ultimate success, even if there are missteps along the way.

I doubt there's much difference between now and the past, it's just publicised more.

Men hit women in the past and socially, even among most men, it was not something anyone approved of. Women hit men and it was generally seen as a joke, a laugh.

We see more of it now as there's so much more access to news. It used to be basically what you read in the Mail, Express, Sun etc.

I hadn't heard of incels etc until Mumsnet.